Thus, the Avengers were less surprised than might have been expected when they turned a corner from the main avenue onto a side path and passed by a tall building whose windows were plastic replicas of ecumenical stained glass. Those windows were currently being rattled by the thudding pressure of overly amplified music, and occasionally one could hear “evuhbody in thuh whole cell block, wuz a-dancin’ tuh thuh jailhouse rock-rock-rock-rock-rock-rock!” being screamed over the booming bass. A scroll-like sign hung beneath a revolving reflector globe above the door, and its gold lettering read, “Second Church of the Latter-Day Elvis, Reverend Wolfman Sid, Presiding. Sermon Concerts Friday and Saturday Nights (5 Creds Donation). Guest Clones Will Perform.”
The side path was less wide than the main thoroughfare. And though it was paved with the same spotless pink plastic, it somehow seemed grittier, more worn, than its larger counterpart. The shops here were smaller, darker, and many advertised services that would make Larry Flynt blush.
The Beast had been bounding back and forth between his friends and the flanking buildings, peering into windows and snickering. (“Geez, Cap,” he’d say to the ice block he carried effortlessly on one shoulder, “42nd Street was never like this!”) Now, having walked with his comrades for a few yards, he turned again to leap away—only to find himself face to face with the haunt-eyed Vision.
“Holy Jiminy Christmas!” exclaimed the startled Beast, almost dropping Captain America. “Why don’t you wear a friggin’ bell around your neck!”
“I have never seen the need for unnecessary adornment,” the Vision answered, matter-of-factly.
“Never mind that,” said Iron Man as the other Avengers gathered around, the Scarlet Witch coming to stand beside her husband. “Did you find out anything?”
“Knowledge, I fear,” answered the synthezoid, “is a rare commodity in this world. There are no libraries, and there appears to be little desire for any. I was, however, able to discover a small collector’s shop that had amongst its inventory a dusty history tape. The proprietor, when he regained his composure, allowed me to scan portions of it.”
“That’s great, Vision,” said Iron Man. “We picked up a lead on Kang while you were gone, so why don’t you fill us in on what you learned while we check it out.”
“Very well, Iron Man. I think you should find it most interesting.”
Once again, the six time-traveling heroes began to walk down the plastic pathway. The Scarlet Witch took her husband’s arm, walking beside him. Quicksilver walked a short distance behind, glowering.
“This Earth,” began the Vision, “is the end result of a total socioeconomic collapse that occurred in the last decade of the twentieth century. Afterward, as humans began to rebuild their society, they had an uncharacteristically logical burst of insight. They realized that if they rebuilt the same society, they were doomed to repeat their previous tragedies. Thus they determined, with the aid of several thousand years of bloody hindsight, to work together to save their race from an endless cycle of growth followed by destruction.
“The root cause of all their recent problems, the new World Government decided, was overpopulation: too many people clamoring for too few resources. And though riots, mob violence, and famine had reduced the Earth’s population dramatically, a mass effort was made to see that such a dangerous overcrowding would never occur again. A unified league of scientists pressed all of their efforts toward restoring the technology of space travel, and then to advancing that science to the point where colonization of the other planets in the solar system was feasible. In a matter of several decades, they were successful.”
The other Avengers listened intently as they walked. Even Thor, who as a god knew the future better than any of them, was fascinated by the Vision’s tale.
The synthezoid continued. “The majority of the Earth’s people were then piloted to her sister planets, the largest numbers going to Jupiter and Saturn as the result of a revived cult movement called ‘Tolkienism.’ It had something to do with the rings, I believe—the tape wasn’t terribly clear on that.
“For quite a few generations, the colonies got along very well, practicing a planned laissez-faire philosophy that had been designed by the World Government—now the Colonial Government—to create the least possible friction between and within the colonies. Population was no longer a threat and people found, much to their own surprise, that they could actually get along with one another.
“The Earth, unfortunately, was another matter entirely. The planet was nearly forgotten by the departed colonists, and fell into a period of war and brutality as successions of petty dictators and instant governments fought for rule of the world. The darkest hour came when control of most of the planet fell into the hands of an ultrazealous religious faction called the Purists. Their Conscience Police pursued such a reign of terror that word of it finally reached even the Colonial Government.
“At that point, the colonists rallied to rout the Purists and retake Earth. Their science was superior, and so the battle was a short one. But even though the hostilities had been limited, and the casualties few, the colonists had been very annoyed—laissez-faire had become a way of life, and they resented having to meddle in what they considered to be other people’s problems. So, in order to prevent the recurrence of such conditions in the future, they relocated most of Earth’s remaining populace and redeveloped the planet into . . . well . . .”
“Yes, Vision?” Iron Man prodded. “Go on.”
“Into an amusement area for tourists.”
“What?!” The Beast’s mouth dropped open. “You mean they’ve turned this entire world into some sort of cosmic Disneyland? Of all the nerve!”
“Yes,” the Vision answered, “it is rather humiliating. But the colonists reasoned that such a move would eliminate the last possibility for conflict in their near-perfect system. In fact, in the centuries since, their science has been focused almost entirely toward the creation and utilization of leisure time, making the Earth the most valued planet in the solar system.”
Inside his metal mask, Tony Stark wiggled his nose, then cybernetically ordered a thin vinyl rod to extend from the top of his helmet to scratch it.
“Looks like things have come full circle, population-wise,” he said. “At least that explains why there aren’t very many people walking the streets.”
“Yeah,” added the Beast. “It also accounts for why the folks who are here show about as much concern as a bunch of well-fed Guernseys. It almost makes me appreciate the friendly snarls and one-finger salutes of a Manhattan rush hour. And that’s scary!”
The Avengers had come to the end of the seven blocks that Mauler had indicated and had stopped, the Beast lowering Captain America’s ice block to the plastic walkway beside him.
“Maybe so, Beast,” the Scarlet Witch said in a puzzled tone, “but I still don’t understand what all this has to do with Kang. The only suggestion of battle or attempted conquest occurred centuries ago, according to that history tape. So what’s Kang doing in this time?”
“Methinks thy question can best be answered, Wanda,” Thor spoke calmly, “in the manner previously prescribed by our leader. That being to ask Kang himself—if, indeed, said base villain can be found.”
“Uh, I got a feeling, Blondie,” the Beast said, his head turned to look down a side path to his left, “that that isn’t going to be a terribly difficult problem.”
One by one, the other Avengers moved to where they could look down the walkway; and one by one, they saw what the Beast had seen. Several blocks away, rising from the center of a large courtyard, was a glittering obelisk. Thirty feet wide and three times as tall, the structure’s four sides were decorated with a solid, sparkling mass that could have been made of shards of broken glass—or of an oil sheik’s ransom in precious gems. On the side facing them was what appeared to be a solid gray doorway, without handle or window. But the building’s most distinctive feature by far was perched, as if impossibly balanced, at
op the point of the spire’s pyramid-shaped peak. It was a blinking neon sign that sported blazing red letters ten feet high.
And those letters flashed the name “KANG,” on and off . . . on and off . . . on and off . . .
Eleven
“Modest, ain’t he?”
The Beast had reshouldered the ice block and now stood bathed in the light of the neon sign along with four of his fellow Avengers, some twenty-five feet from the obelisk. The remaining Avenger, the Vision, hovered in the air over the towering spire. The courtyard itself was deserted, the surrounding buildings closed, empty, and eerily silent.
“He does seem conspicuously unconcerned about keeping his presence a secret,” Iron Man admitted. “He’s got to know by now that his plot against us in the past failed. So he’s either incredibly confident, or this is one hell of a trap.” He tilted his head back slightly and increased his vocal amplification “See anything, Vision?”
The hovering synthazoid, desolidifying to the point where he could float on prevailing air currents, answered in equally electronic tones. “Nothing, Iron Man. There are no openings in the peak. It would appear that the sole point of egress is through the front door.”
“Damn,” Iron Man said to himself. As Tony Stark, he had designed security systems for some of the twentieth century’s most important corporations. But what he faced now beat them all. For as he and his fellow warriors had approached the obelisk, they had discovered that the surrounding courtyard was not covered entirely by the now familiar pink plastic. Instead, radiating from the tower and encircling it to a distance of approximately twenty-five feet, was what looked to be a moat. But when they reached that trench, they found it to be something more than an everyday, run-of-the-mill castle creek. They approached the moat cautiously, in ones and twos, but when they peered down over the fosse’s rim they gasped as a single entity; in lieu of the expected deep water or hungry alligator, they could see what could most accurately be described as a back corner of infinity. It was deep space; dark, star-spattered, and as cold and still as a dead man’s breath. Kang was a master of space as well as time, and he had surrounded his command center with a space warp as endless as his maniacal imagination. Oddly enough, he had also supplied a bridge, the color and clarity of thin lemonade, that linked the plastic courtyard to the obelisk’s door.
“Well, Shellhead,” the Beast said as he shifted the ice block to a more comfortable position, “it looks like you’d better appoint someone to play Avon lady.”
Quicksilver stood next to Iron Man. “There’s no need for selection, Beast. I’m obviously the one to try Kang’s defenses. As the fastest among us, I can be past any traps—”
Quicksilver stood next to the obelisk across the bridge. “—before they can activate.”
“Maybe so, Pietro,” Iron Man’s tone was not appreciative, “but I think a little more preplanning would have been to our advantage.”
Iron Man’s meaning was made graphically clear as the shining yellow bridge split evenly across the middle and began to slowly retract into the banks of the moat. Quicksilver had indeed been successful in avoiding the trap, but not in keeping that trap from being sprung.
Iron Man barked orders in a voice comfortable with command. “Wanda, Beast, jump across to the other side of the bridge before the gap gets too wide! Vision, try to penetrate the door and see if there are any controls to open it on the other side! Thor, take to the air! You and I will watch the flanks for attack!”
Without a second thought, all of the Avengers followed their orders. The Beast leaped the five-foot gap easily, even carrying his frozen burden. Wanda followed as the gap widened to six feet, and stood with her brother and the Beast next to the obelisk’s featureless gray door. They were joined in seconds by the Vision, who immediately desolidified into a state as transparent as tissue and pushed forward in an effort to pass through the door—only to stop, his head canted slightly, with his fingers and part of his palms immersed in the shimmering gray slab.
“This . . . is very odd,” he said evenly, pulling at his hands. “Kang’s advanced science must have created this obelisk. Its substance is so dense that even I cannot pass through. Likewise, I can’t seem to withdraw!”
Quicksilver smirked as he pressed his back against the door. “So, android, you’ve finally found a peril that your clattering circuits can’t solve, eh?”
“Need I remind you, Speedster,” the Vision stood motionless, his shadowed eyes angled toward Quicksilver, “that it is a peril of your causing?”
The Beast placed the ice block on his head and balanced it there as he squeezed back against the door. The bridge had retracted to a point where it extended from the bank a mere five feet.
“Look, guys, you can settle your little tiffs some other time, okay? Right now, someone had better come up with a real swift alternative or we’re all gonna be space kites!”
But in the air above, an alternative had already been decided upon.
“Thor!” Iron Man cried. “Hit the door from the left! I’ll hit it from the right!” The battle plan was simple; there was no time for the elaborate. The yellow bridge had shrunk to no more than three feet in length, and the cosmic moat yawned awesomely.
Trying not to think of what would happen if they failed, Iron Man brought both fists out before him and kicked in the boosters on his boot jets, speeding at a downward angle directly toward the obelisk door. To his left, Thor swung mighty Mjolnir once around his head and then flung it earthward, holding the mallet by its handle so that it carried him in its wake toward the glittering spire.
Armored Avenger and enchanted hammer struck the grim gray door in unison at a point several feet above the immobilized Vision’s head, and the very heavens trembled. The door shattered, cracking into fist-sized pieces and exploding inward as Iron Man and Thor crashed through. Pressing against the door, Quicksilver, the Vision, and the Scarlet Witch also tumbled inside in a rain of gray dust and skittering rubble.
The Beast, however, was not so fortunate. He had also been leaning against the door, but when the resistance had ceased and he had begun to fall backward, the ice block on his head—the ice block that contained a helpless friend and colleague—had tilted forward. Almost as much from instinct as thought, the Beast reached out as he fell, grabbing hold of the block and twisting, hurling the massive weight back into the obelisk. It was only then that he realized that he had pushed himself out of that structure, and that the lemon colored bridge had completely retracted.
With a strained grimace and an unconsciously whispered “Aw, nuts,” Hank McCoy dropped into the void.
Twelve
Thor was the only one who actually saw the Beast fall. “ ’Od’s blood!” he cried, instantly bringing Mjolnir around to carry him forward, sweeping past the still-sprawling Avengers like a blond missile. As he shot through the shattered doorway, he pointed Mjolnir straight down, streaking into the cosmic moat without a pause.
“Good lord,” mused Quicksilver, slapping dust from his uniform as he rose to his feet. “Now why do you suppose the Thunder God did that?”
“I don’t . . .” the Scarlet Witch began, but stopped as she saw the filmy ice block settling in the rubble. Desperately, she looked around, and then her large brown eyes grew even larger with realization. “Oh, my God! The Beast! Hank didn’t make it!”
“Thor must have gone after him,” the Vision said, rising and wafting toward the door. “He may need help.”
Iron Man scrambled through the debris, reaching the doorway just ahead of the synthezoid. “No, Vision! We have to wait here. You or I might be able to survive deep space for a while, but if we got lost, there’s a good chance that at least one of us wouldn’t get back! And our forces have been cut down enough already. Thor’s a god; if anyone can bring the Beast back, he can!”
Another hero might have ignored Iron Man’s orders, determined to sacrifice his own life for that of a friend, but the Vision was a creature of logic. He saw the reason in his l
eader’s argument, and so resolidified and floated back down to the floor. And if you had asked him about the grumbling sound he made, he would have insisted calmly that it was merely his stabilizers shifting.
The four Avengers gathered at the jagged opening that had been the obelisk’s door, moving like mourners at a wake. They would grieve at the loss of any of their members, but the Beast—like some endearing, oversized teddy bear—had earned a special place in their hearts. Even Quicksilver, gruff and hot tempered, held a well-hidden affection for him.
And so they waited, watching the void in a silence broken only by tense breathing and the whispered sigh of settling dust. They waited for what seemed like minutes, hours, eons, but in reality it was only seconds later that Iron Man stabbed a gauntleted finger toward the star-sparkled moat, calling out, “There! My long-range sensors have picked up something moving this way, fast!”
So fast that an instant later they all saw the rapidly approaching speck, and only seconds after that Thor hurtled through the doorway into the obelisk, a shuddering blue burden slung over one shoulder.
“Thank God! He’s alive!” Wanda said joyously as Thor carefully set the Beast down near the door.
The Beast was indeed alive, but just barely. He lay huddled in a fetal position on the floor, eyes closed, trembling uncontrollably. His long fur was matted with tiny icicles that clinked together dully as he shook.
“Our comrade’s foresight in holding his breath hath stayed asphyxia,” Thor said darkly. “But I know not if my rescue wert timely enow to forestall a more lingering death from the chill of space.”
“Just leave that to me, buddy,” Iron Man said, moving forward to kneel down beside the Beast. He then reached to his waist, giving the discus-shaped power-storage pods at each side a quarter turn, clockwise, to remove them from their holding connectors. The pods were designed to store solar energy gathered by the refractory surface of Iron Man’s armor, and were utilized to power that armor when direct sunlight wasn’t available, or when extra boosts of strength were required. Now, as Iron Man fitted the pods to the receptacles in the palms of his gauntlets—the same receptacles from which his repulsor rays were emitted—and secured them with a counterclockwise quarter turn, they were about to serve another purpose.
Marvel Novel Series 10 - The Avengers - The Man Who Stole Tomorrow Page 12
